Strategic Flexibility Enables Lemons to Become Lemonade

A rapidly growing fruit juice manufacturer was always struggling to get local California fruit to avoid having to ship in expensive juice from out of state.  NPC helped the company upgrade its production equipment within its existing line of credit. However when a citrus freeze hit, the company had a chance to buy all the fruit it could handle at record low prices. NPC worked with the firm’s bank to triple its already fully used line of credit in order to buy enough fruit to operate its factories (with their new equipment) 24 x 7 throughout the season. With the lower cost fruit, the company's margins doubled and their bottom line increased eight fold.

New Technology – Implementation Limitations Equals New Opportunity

A $300M international network services firm wanted to deploy a new data communications technology but was concerned because it was unable to collect customers' network usage information that was the basis of pricing in the industry. Working with the firm’s marketing and operations group, NPC designed a fixed monthly charge pricing structure, which had often been requested by customers, and became the first in the industry to offer it.  Profitability was assured by working with the network engineers to determine network data volume exposures and then build systems to monitor the networks actual performance relative to the pricing assumptions. The marketing campaign drew front-page industry interest and the ease of sale helped it become the fastest growing product line in the company’s history.

NPC Introduces a New Market

A bar code system integrator was losing net income as competitive pressures drove down hardware prices and margins. NPC recognized the company’s unique ability to develop software to directly link bar code equipment to legacy and ERP systems. Introductions to a mid-sized ERP producer led to a co-marketing of the bar code systems with the ERP software. Results for the system integrator were new software products to offer, new sales channels to use, a new strategy that could be replicated with other ERP vendors, and new growth at higher margins for the company.

Technology Translated into a New Service

A $20M fleet vehicle location tracking company that used cellular technology had excess wireless capacity and wanted to translate that into new revenues. NPC defined how a messaging service to the vehicles could be established, found a telecom hardware supplier to partner with in developing the service on their equipment, and helped define the business relationship going forward.

Pricing Overhaul

A service company’s primary product pricing rules had grown by adding features and special case pricing every year, but had reached the point where it was too complex and confusing to explain to new customers or sales staff. NPC designed a new overall pricing plan taking into consideration the decreasing cost of the shared infrastructure, the increased competitive pressures, the new market positioning of the service, the reseller sales channel’s requirements and the existing contracts that assured large customers of “best available” pricing. The revised pricing led to an upsurge in orders and eventually two key strategic partnerships with larger competitors.

Putting Together the Team - Ground Zero Start-up Opportunity

Called in to review the business plan of an Internet platform developer, NPC saw an opportunity to introduce the technology to a food distribution industry expert who could lead a commercial application of the platform.  The parties met and a new joint venture was created combining the technology of the developer and service personnel of the food industry contact. It received Angel funding and, within 4 months, became a revenue generating business entity.